D&D 5E (2014) Intelligent Undead: do they have souls?

[Raunalyn]

Not if they are gingers...

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Given that you can resurrect an undead after you kill them I imagine they do have souls since they can't be resurrected until the taint of undeath has been purged from their soul (ie the soul can't acquiesce to being raised until their undead state has been destroyed).

 

[Warpiglet]

I believe you already have the answer to the question. You just have not decided yet.

I believe this falls under the rubric of you craft your own world.

Often I see questions asked of Sage Advice similar to this one. Often questions are about rules which I get because people want compatibility across tables and shared language. Other times players ask about how the world in a particular setting should behave; I always feel an urge to empower the questioner to have fun! Make a call YOUR call!

What is creepier and more fun for you? Perhaps an evil roaming soul possesses the bones when animate/create undead is cast! Perhaps each skeleton even has some lingering personality. Perhaps its like some of the lowest devils and demons such that only a little memory exists of a former life.

Whatever you decide will be "right" even if you ignore every single answer to your thread.

 

[Kobold Boots]

In my own campaigns I generally presume that every body that is brought back to unlife has a soul associated with it.

When the body is brought back to unlife the soul is in some variation of purgatory. It's just whether it's there willingly or not and how much control it has over its situation.

I find that this approach to it creates the most storyline opportunities. I sometimes do the same thing with intelligent magic items.

 

[Elderbrain]

I would consider the intelligence of the undead in question and its alignment. If it has enough personality left to qualify as "evil", then I'd say it has a soul (whether its own or anothers), since it is able to choose to be evil. If the undead is unaligned, then its possible it's soulless, since it doesn't understand morals and ethics. We know some soulless or nearly soulless beings can act in a semi-intelligent manner (i.e. Golems), but these beings generally aren't aligned or are Neutral. The text in the Monster Manual (or other source) sometimes specifies things like this (i.e. Liches definitely have souls, abeit not in their skeletal bodies.) If the text doesn't say, your guess is as good as anybody's.If you decide the undead is intelligent, it should certainly be able to attune to magic items, unless it otherwise fails to meet a specific requirement (i.e an evilly-aligned undead trying to attune to a magic sword that requires a good-aligned wielder.)

 

[Yaarel]

The thing is, the soul is complex. Different parts of it can split up to do different things in separate ways.

The soul is the life of the body − the living aura of the body − moreorless identical with Ki.

Then there is emotions and intellect − the self-identity − the spirit of a person. This aspect of soul learns and grows.

Then there is the higher self − the eternal self − conscious being. This is the best version of oneself, the aspect of Paradise.

And there is even an aspect beyond that, beyond oneself, where all that exists is an aspect of ones true self − the self-transcending self − what Buddhism calls the Anatman the ‘no self’, the cause of all altruism.

What happens in the case of Undeads is, the aura of the body lingers, and there are echoes of a former of life. But the rest of the soul is gone away. Undeads are unwhole.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I disagree with some of the above posters about ghosts being souls. I think that's another "depends on the undead" situation. A ghost could easily be a remnant of the spirit left on the material plane for one reason or another, perhaps an incredibly powerful feeling left behind after death.

The first line of the MM entry on ghosts is: "A ghost is the soul of a once-living creature, bound to haunt a specific location, creature, or object that held significance to it in its life."

Your campaign may vary, of course.

 

[Sunseeker]

The first line of the MM entry on ghosts is: "A ghost is the soul of a once-living creature, bound to haunt a specific location, creature, or object that held significance to it in its life."

Your campaign may vary, of course.

Sure, I accept that's the RAW answer. I just don't think the RAW has to be the only answer, so I was philosophizing on the subject.